When Your High Schooler Says They’re Looking For Fun Stuff To Do: What It Means And Low-Prep Ideas That Work
The leftover carnitas taco grease was still congealing on the dinner plates when Javi, my 15-year-old sophomore, slung himself over the arm of the living room couch and dropped his phone face-down on the cushion. “I’m a high schooler looking for fun stuff to do,” he said, flat, like he was reporting a problem with the Wi-Fi. “Nothing sounds good.”
I was halfway through folding his little sister’s soccer socks, and my first three responses popped into my head before he finished talking: Go finish your algebra homework. Text Milo and see if he can hang. The rec center’s doing that college app workshop this weekend, you should sign up. I bit all of them back. I’d said versions of all three in the last month, and every single one had earned me an eye roll and a retreat to his bedroom, where he’d scroll TikTok for an hour then emerge saying even that felt boring.
I work part-time as an ed tech in our district’s high school resource room, so I hear this line at least three times a week. Kids slump into the room 20 minutes before first bell, backpacks slung over one shoulder, and say there’s nothing to do after school, nothing fun going on, hanging out with friends just means sitting in someone’s basement scrolling separate phones half the time. Most adults I know respond the same way I used to: push a productive activity, offer up a big-ticket plan, or tell them to just “get off the phone and go outside,” like that’s a complete thought.
That Tuesday, I thought about the $10 bill I had in my wallet for coffee, and the dollar store 10 minutes down the road. “C’mon,” I said, grabbing my keys. “You can spend the whole ten on whatever you want. No rules, no ‘that’s a waste of money.’ We’re messing around with it when we get back.”
He complained the whole drive that the dollar store only had “baby stuff and weird cleaning supplies,” but he wandered the aisles for 15 minutes anyway and came back with a 64-ounce bottle of blue dish soap, a 20-pack of glow sticks, a disposable clear rain poncho, three rolls of Smarties, and a spool of 20-pound fishing line he refused to explain. We stopped at the park on the way home, bent a couple wire hangers out of the garage into bubble wands, and mixed the soap with water in an old bucket. It was just getting dark, and he posted a blurry photo of the giant wobbling bubble he made to his Snapchat story. Forty minutes later, two of his friends showed up on their bikes, one with his golden retriever puppy trotting alongside. They messed around until 9:30, blowing bubbles, breaking glow sticks to drip the dye into the grass, and arguing about whether the fishing line could hold the puppy’s weight if they braided it into a leash. No one checked their phones more than twice the whole time.
After that, I started paying more attention to what was actually going on when kids said they had nothing fun to do. It’s not that they’re ungrateful, or that phones have ruined their ability to entertain themselves, like so many parents complain. It’s that high school is this weird in-between spot no one really warns you about. They’re too old for the parent-scheduled rec leagues and birthday parties they grew up with, but most don’t have regular car access, extra spending money, or the comfort to text a friend “come over and do nothing” without a concrete plan. Almost every school-organized activity is competitive, demands 10 hours a week, or gets framed as a resume line for college. Even social media, the default time-killer, leaves them drained after 20 minutes, because it’s built to hold their attention, not let them make or mess up something of their own.
The shifts we’ve made at our house, and that I’ve passed along to other parents, are all tiny—no expensive subscriptions or big trips required. First, I stopped leading with productive options when Javi says he’s bored. It sounds obvious, but it’s a hard habit to break: so many of us are trained to see unstructured time as wasted time, especially with college admissions always in the back of your mind. But fun that has to count for something isn’t actually fun. At school, I keep a $15 bin of random junk under my desk: origami paper, unassembled wooden model cars, a beat-up deck of Uno, rubber bands, disposable cameras I found on clearance. Kids who show up early with nothing to do dig through it and mess around for 40 minutes, even seniors who swear craft stuff is for little kids. At home, I keep a similar stash in the front hall closet: giant bubble mix, cheap water guns, shrinky dink sheets, glow sticks. I don’t beg anyone to use it, just mention it once, no pressure.
I also stopped treating fun like it has to be a big, scheduled event. We do what Javi calls “dumb 10-minute runs” once or twice a week: slushies at the gas station after school, driving around looking for the weirdest local yard signs, digging through the thrift store free bin to try on the ugliest clothes we can find. Last month he brought two friends along, and they spent 45 minutes cramming into too-small 90s prom dresses, took 20 blurry photos, and put everything back before we left. It cost $3 in gas, nothing else. If he’s too self-conscious to admit he wants to do something that feels silly, I frame it as my idea, not his: “I’m gonna test the new slip-n-slide tarp in the backyard, you can come if you want” lands way better than “don’t you want to go play outside?”
Most importantly, I don’t rush to fix boredom every time he says it. A few rainy Saturdays ago, I was on a work call when he knocked on my office door to say there was nothing to do. I told him I was tied up for an hour, he’d have to figure it out. I expected TikTok audio blaring through his door 10 minutes later, but when I hung up I found him in the garage taking apart a broken toaster we’d set out for recycling, trying to rig the heating element into a tiny cheese melter for his sandwiches. It tripped the breaker once and never melted cheddar all the way through, but he spent two hours on it, then ordered a $12 replacement part with his own allowance to try again. Boredom isn’t an emergency most of the time. It’s the gap where their own weird, specific ideas show up, if you let them.
It’s not like this fixed everything. Javi still slumps on the couch some nights and says every possible idea sounds stupid. He still hasn’t picked a new club to join this semester, and I still catch myself worrying he’s wasting time he “should” be using to build his college resume. Last week he told me he was bored, I tossed him a pack of popping candy and said I was getting mint chocolate chip in 10 minutes if he wanted to come. He complained the whole way to the car, but he ate his whole cone in the parking lot and ranted about his biology lab for 20 minutes.
I don’t think he needs every minute of high school to be scheduled or impressive. Most of the stuff I still remember from 10th grade isn’t the football games or college info nights. It’s the stupid, unplanned, nothing stuff that didn’t count for anything. For now, that’s enough.
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